Favorite Things Friday

Sorry I haven't posted in a while (I know you've been anxiously awaiting my return).  I'm home in Wilmette for winter break and have been away from my computer much more than usual, which has been a nice change.  I've also been away from running this past week, thanks to what is probably patellar tendonitis, which has not been so nice.  Anyway, back to it:

This Week's Favorite Thing: Nike Pro Combat Mock Turtleneck

Clearly I should be a fashion photographer

I think this is it, but it's hard to tell online.

This is my absolute favorite winter running shirt.  What I love about it:

• thumb holes
• mock turtleneck collar to keep out the wind
• extra long torso that doesn't bunch up
• soft and fleecy on the inside
• form-fitting enough to be a great base layer without being uncomfortably tight

I got the pink one for Christmas last year, and have been looking for a second one ever since.  So I was super excited when I went to our local running store, gift card in hand (thanks, Mom and Dad!), and found this hanging out on the back of the rack.

Seems to be a slightly updated version

Only one there, and it was a different color AND my size.  Score!  I also got their very last pair of size 8 Adrenaline GTS 11's at 25% off since they're now the older model.  Double score!

Disclaimer: I'm not nearly important or popular enough for Nike to send me free stuff.  I just really like this shirt.


What winter running gear keeps you warm?

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Back in Wilmette for Christmas!  I spent yesterday morning frantically packing (got to the airport and discovered that my bag weighed 49.5 pounds -- whew!)  I didn't get home until about 4pm and still needed to get 4 miles in, so I was faced with a decision: hit the treadmill in the basement, or go outside for my first ever nighttime run in the dark.  I hate, hate, HATE the treadmill, and it was fairly warm outside, so I decided to risk getting runover/mugged/abducted by aliens.

Pre-run: not so sure about this running in the dark idea

So glad I did!  I had a headlamp and was running on even sidewalks in a safe neighborhood, so I never really felt worried.  And there were Christmas lights everywhere!  I couldn't really see my watch, so I focused on shortening my stride (PT's parting words of wisdom) and keeping my breathing easy.  I felt like I was moving much faster than usual, but not like I was really exerting more effort.  I ended up averaging 10:30 (my goal marathon pace) for four miles.

Post-run: night running is awesome!

Monday Mileage Report

Another solid week of training!

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
12 Cross	13 3.1 mi@11:15 15 min strength	14 3.6 mi@10:31	15 3.4 mi run/walk 20 min strength	16 Rest	17 9.9 mi@12:03	18 2.1 mi@11:40 Jingle Bell 5K 28:47	25.3 mi

The most exciting part of the week was the Jingle Bell 5K, which you can read about here.

Today I went to what was hopefully my last physical therapy appointment.  Because of where my shin hurts, the PT thinks it's actually another IT band symptom.  Apparently there's an insertion point on the shin -- who knew?  She said this means I should take it easy until it stops hurting, but all I heard was "you don't have a stress fracture so you're good to go!"

Here's the plan for this week.  I'll probably end up switching days around to accommodate the whole Christmas thing :)

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
19 Cross	20 Easy: 4 mi	21 MSD: 7 mi	22 Easy: 4 mi	23 Rest	24 Christmas Eve Pace: 7 mi	25 Christmas LSD: 14 mi	36 mi

In other exciting news, I'm only 40 miles away from 1,000 for the year!


How did your training go last week?

Somerville Jingle Bell Run 5K

This morning I ran the Somerville Jingle Bell Run 5K.  I put it on the calendar a while back just to have something fun to run this winter.  I tend to be a total chicken about speed, so my goal for this race was to go out hard enough to risk blowing up.

Mission accomplished.

Some context:

• The fastest I've ever run a mile is 7:58.
• My 5K PR is 27:40, or about 8:55 pace
• I did a ten mile long run yesterday
• The course was much hillier than I expected (all relative, of course--I'm used to pancake flat)

I jogged the two miles to the start because my training plan originally had me running six today (I pushed the extra mile to yesterday's long run).  It was really cold this morning, so I definitely appreciated the warm up.  Most people were dressed up in awesome costumes, except for me because I'm lame.

Blurry AND not very festive

Let's compare last week's 5K with this week's, shall we?

              Today    Last Week

Mile 1:     8:23       9:14

Mile 2:     9:12       9:05

Mile 3:     9:46       9:08

Total:     28:52     28:55

Ouch.  I actually saw pace numbers beginning with a 7 early on in the race!  I had an average pace of 8:30 through the first half, and then the wheels came off.  I had to walk up a few hills, including the monster at the end, and my legs still complained plenty about that!  In the final stretch, I started to feel nauseated, like I always do at the end of 5Ks I run hard.  To add insult to injury, I saw my watch hit 3.1 just as I passed the 3 mile marker.  There may or may not have been some mental cursing at that point.

After the race, I looked around for my running group friends for a few minutes before giving up and going into Starbucks to get hot tea for my two mile walk home.  Of course, as soon as I walked into Starbucks, there they were!  They both had good-but-not-great races, also falling victim to those darn hills.

Overall, it was a really fun race, and I'm glad I pushed myself at the start.  Plus, we got these super cool medal/bottle openers.

What a lovely medal!

But wait, there's more!

And the race shirt was pretty cool, too.  Not a tech shirt, but I like the color!

Apologies for the backwards mirror picture -- my roommate is out of town

Anyone else do a fun holiday race this weekend?

Favorite Things Friday

This week's favorite thing: Brooks Adrenaline GTS 11

Adrenalines with jeans = stylin'

I tried a few different kinds of running shoes before I found these and fell in love.  I have flat feet (along with a misaligned tibia, and various other biomechanical issues, apparently) and these seem to provide just the right amount of stability and cushioning to get me through marathon training without killer shin splints.  I have three pairs at the moment, two of which are going to need to leave the rotation before too long.  Can't decide whether to stockpile the 11s or try the new 12s out this winter ...

Monday Mileage Report

Awesome training last week, culminating in Sunday's epic running adventure.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
5 Bikram	6 3.2 mi@10:40 + strides	7 5 mi@10:20	8 3.2 mi@11:09 20 min strength	9 Rest	10 6 mi@11:22	11 8.9 mi@11:41 Winter Classic 5K 28:54	29.6 mi

On Monday, I went back to Bikram as my cross training.  The heat was much more bearable than the first time, so I felt like I was actually getting a little more out of the poses (since I wasn't worried about passing out).  I already posted about Wednesday's run, so I'll just say that it was much faster than a normal midweek run thanks to my awesome running buddies.  Tuesday and Thursday were uneventful three milers.

Saturday was an easy six miles where I managed to keep the pace fairly steady until I hit wind and traffic lights after the turn.

MILE	TIME	AVG.PACE
1	11:11	11'11"/mi
2	22:21	11'10"/mi
3	33:30	11'09"/mi
4	44:29	10'59"/mi
5	56:06	11'37"/mi
6	1:08:14	12'08"/mi

Which brings me to Sunday's epic running adventure.  Last week Diane convinced me to sign up for the Dec 11 Winter Classic 5K.  We went to pick up our packets Friday evening and were very happy to discover that we were both on the "nice" list (rather than the "naughty" list) so we got cool fleece hats!  The long-sleeved cotton tshirts were pretty cool, too.

You can almost see the shirt in this picture of our super awesome post-race graham cracker house

I had 12 miles on the schedule for Sunday, so I plotted out a 9 mile course ending at the race start and woke up early (for me, anyway) to get the miles in before the 10:30am start.  I did an easy 8 miles along the river, then I picked up Diane near her apartment and we jogged to the start.  My goal was to run the 5K in under 30 minutes on fried legs, which was actually a fairly tall order given that my 5K PR isn't a whole lot speedier than that at 27:41.  We timed things perfectly and arrived at the bar sponsoring the race about 15 minutes before the start.  Just enough time to take a mint chocolate Gu, re-pin my bib, and get a really annoying rock out of my shoe.  And switch my iPod over from my audio book to my Christmas playlist.

There was no seeding, so the start was a little chaotic, but I broke free after about a quarter mile and settled on a just-over-nine-minute pace.  After the first mile my legs really started complaining.  Just after the 2 mile mark, the road started a slight incline.  My legs were not having it, so I took a quick walk break and had a few sips of water from my camelbak.  After that, I was powered through to the end, although that last .1 seemed endless!  I almost crashed when the woman in front of me stopped immediately after crossing the finish line.  Not cool!

According to my watch, I finished in 28:54, which I was very happy with.  The splits were 9:14, 9:05, 9:08.  My official time was 29:45 since I was back a bit from the start and they didn't have a start mat to calculate net time.  I was exhausted, but after two months of recovery and easing back into full training, it felt great to know that I had really pushed myself.

After the race, my legs were completely dead and we were freezing, so we stopped at a bar about halfway home to enjoy some super delicious cheeseburgers.  We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking peppermint schnapps hot chocolate, watching Christmas movies, and building an awesome graham cracker house.  

In case you couldn't fully appreciate it in the last photo

I'm a little concerned about how much my left shin has been hurting since the epic adventure, but I'm hoping that icing and resting today will take care of it.  This week is a stepback week, so my legs will get a little bit of a break.  But I am running another Christmas-themed 5K on Sunday.  Still deciding whether to run it for the PR or just take it easy ...

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
12 Cross	13 Easy: 3 mi	14 MSD: 5 mi	15 Easy: 3 mi	16 Rest	17 LSD: 9 mi	18 Jingle Bell 5K Pace: 3 mi	26 mi

Favorite Things Friday

This week's favorite thing: Runner's World What to Wear for Runners calculator
Last week I wrote about how much I love getting my print edition of Runner's World magazine.  This week, I'm moving on to one of my favorite features on their website.

We've been having oddly warm temperatures here in Boston, which is nice, but problematic for figuring out what to wear on my runs.  I know what to do when it's really hot or really cold, but the in between temperatures always confuse me.  So I started using the What to Wear for Runners calculator on the Runner's World website.

It's super easy to use.  Just enter the weather conditions for your run ...

... and it tells you what to wear!

At first I didn't trust it at all -- I thought I would freeze in what the calculator told me to wear.  But I went with it anyway, and I was comfortable for the whole run.  The times I've doubted it and put on extra clothes, I ended up being too warm.

You can even play with the "When I run, I like to feel:" setting to customize it a bit.  For pace runs, I like the "in-between" setting, but for slower runs I like the "warm" setting since I get cold easily and sometimes I'm out there for a really long time!

Inadvertent Psych Experiment

Last week, I wrote about my love-hate relationship with group running.  This morning, it was time to try again.  I wanted to get five miles in this morning, but my group normally does a loop that's just over three miles.  So I headed out by myself to get 20 minutes of running in before I met up with them.  After last week's reminder that running first thing in the morning = slowness, I was also hoping that a few miles would wake me up and warm up my legs.  For the miles on my own I didn't care about pace, I just wanted to make sure I was back at the house in time to meet the group.  So I changed the settings on my super spiffy Nike+ GPS watch to show the current time up in the corner where it usually shows pace.  Worked perfectly and I made it back to the house right at 8:30.

When we headed out again, I completely forgot that I had changed the watch settings.  It was a little chilly, and our speediest runner was setting the pace, so I assumed we were moving faster than I had been on my own.  I glanced down at my watch, saw a sub-9 minute pace and thought "wow, this feels quick but I don't feel like I'm running 5K pace!"  This continued for the next 2.5 miles.  I started to wonder how I could possibly be on pace for a near-PR 5K and still be able to converse about academic sex scandals and whether or not you can meet a boyfriend/girlfriend at an airport.  Coming up on mile 3, I noticed that we were just over 9 minute pace and holding steady.  I thought that was a little odd because a) it didn't feel like we'd slowed down, and b) the pace on the watch never holds that steady.  This was the point when I realized that I was an idiot and that it was, in fact, just after 9am.

Still, when I got home and checked the splits, I found out that we had run the last two miles faster than I normally would (9:48 and 9:35), and I stuck with the guys for the whole loop, chatting away and never wanting to quit.  So maybe I've just been psyching myself out the whole time?

Monday Mileage Report

Pretty good training this week.  I cut back Wednesday's run by two miles and Sunday's run by half a mile to keep the weekly mileage from jumping too much.  By the end of the weekend my legs were completely fried, but nothing felt injured.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
28 Rest	29  3.2 mi@11:16 PT exercises, abs	30  4 mi@11:03 Bikram	1 3.1 mi@10:35	2 Rest	3 6 mi@10:19 PT exercises	4 10.6 mi@11:51	27 mi

I skipped my cross training day on Monday since I was sick and flew back from Chicago that morning.  But I think I more than made up for it when I tried Bikram on Wednesday in addition to my run!  I tend to run cold, and my mom is highly resistant to turning on the AC in the summer, so I didn't think the heat would bother me too much.  I was wrong!  Even laying on the mat I could feel my heart pounding and I felt like I couldn't breathe.  I went back for my second class today and felt much, much better.  I think I might make it a semi-regular part of the training routine.

The weekend runs went well.  Saturday's pace run again overshot my target marathon pace (10:30-10:45), but I'm starting to get the hang of pacing myself.  The splits were:

1    9:55

2  10:17

3  10:18

4  10:32

5  10:26

6  10:20

The paces on this week's runs also reinforce my belief that I do not run well first thing in the morning.  Just compare Tuesday and Thursday's short, easy runs.

I also went out dancing on Saturday night, so my legs didn't exactly feel peppy when I headed out for Sunday's long run, which was my first attempt to run longer than ten miles since Chicago.  Still, it was a nice day and I got to enjoy the Esplanade, which is absolutely beautiful.  I took quick walk breaks for water ever 2 miles and took Gu at miles 4 and 8 -- I was excited to try out the special edition Peppermint Stick flavor.  It was pretty good, but not as good as Mint Chocolate.   I was tired at the end, but not dying, so I'm hoping I'll be able to keep building up long run the distance without too much trouble.

Here's the plan for this week:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
5 Cross	6 Easy: 3 mi	7 MSD: 6 mi	8 Easy: 3 mi	9 Rest	10 Easy: 6 mi	11 3/1: 12 mi	30 mi

Diane just convinced me to make the Cambridge Winter Classic 5K the end of Sunday's long run.  I was planning to pick up the pace for the last quarter of the run anyway, so it actually works out well.  Plus it's her birthday, so how can I say no?